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FRVCTVS AMORIS: ON CATULLUS 55.17–22

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2017

Wilfried H. Lingenberg
Wilfried H. Lingenberg*
Affiliation:
Universität des Saarlandes
*
w.lingenberg@mx.uni-saarland.de
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Extract

In carm. 55, Catullus supposes his friend Camerius may be caught in erotic adventure:

      num te lacteolae tenent puellae?
      si linguam clauso tenes in ore,
      fructus proicies amoris omnes:
      uerbosa gaudet Venus loquella.    20
      uel, si uis, licet obseres palatum,
      dum nostri sis particeps amoris.

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , December 2017, pp. 656 - 659
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

In carm. 55, Catullus supposes his friend Camerius may be caught in erotic adventure:

num te lacteolae tenent puellae?
si linguam clauso tenes in ore,
fructus proicies amoris omnes:
uerbosa gaudet Venus loquella.    20
uel, si uis, licet obseres palatum,
dum nostri sis particeps amoris.Footnote 1

The general sense of lines 18–19 is sufficiently clear: ‘If you do not talk, you will give up all benefits of your love affair.’ But what exactly are fructus amoris referring to? Commentators would fairly unanimously equate the expression with gaudia uenerea, sexual pleasure, as suggested by Lucr. 4.1073 nec Veneris fructu caret is qui uitat amorem, Prop. 3.20.30 semper amet, fructu semper amoris egens, and Ov. Rem. am. 103 delectat Veneris decerpere fructum, plus a handful of later occurrences.Footnote 2 This, however, was deemed inexact already in the nineteenth century by K. Rossberg,Footnote 3 who went on to paraphrase ‘aller Genuss, der aus der Liebe entspringt’ (my italics); and on a still closer look, any such interpretation seems to be precluded by proicies and omnes. Whether understood in a narrower sense or more broadly, Camerius’ joys would, at least partly, lie in the past and could by no conceivable means be ‘lost completely’ anymore.Footnote 4

Assuming hyperbole of some kind might offer an expedient,Footnote 5 but Catullus had, I suggest, something considerably more specific in mind. To the fiery love poet, worthy fruits to be reaped from love would first of all be—love poems; a love affair either prompts new song, or has to be considered an opportunity wasted. In this sense, Camerius will indeed ‘lose all fruits of love’ if he ‘remains silent’.Footnote 6

The curious idea of poetry as the ultimate purpose of life's vicissitudes is as old as Homeric epic. When, in a situation not unlike Catullus’ in carm. 55, the Phaeacian king Alcinous tries to break Odysseus’ long silence and make him relate his adventures, his argument bears similarity to Catullus’: θεοὶ […] ἐπεκλώσαντο δ᾽ ὄλεθρον | ἀνθρώποις, ἵνα ᾖσι καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή (Od. 8.579–80)—the purpose of divinely ordained destruction is heroic song. Concerning erotic poetry in particular, Catullus may have recalled a quotation from Euripides’ Stheneboea which appears to have become proverbial almost immediately: ποιητὴν δ᾽ ἄρα | Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν (TrGF Eur. fr. 663).Footnote 7 Aristophanes (Vesp. 1074) and Plato (Symp. 196e2–3) simply need to quote the protasis κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν verbatim in order to evoke Euripides’ lines, and the thought recurs many times in later authors, either repeating or modifying the original wording.Footnote 8 Hellenistic poets were especially creative in making their sense of it. A famous example of an ἄμουσος-lover-turned-poet is Theocritus’ Polyphemus in the eleventh Idyll, and, in this case, interaction between real life and love poetry becomes reciprocal, since first of all the Cyclops’ composition of a poem assuages his unhappy love (Id. 11.1–4, 80–1):

οὐδὲν ποττὸν ἔρωτα πεφύκει φάρμακον ἄλλο,
Νικία, οὔτ᾽ ἔγχριστον, ἐμὶν δοκεῖ, οὔτ᾽ ἐπίπαστον,
ἢ ταὶ Πιερίδες· κοῦφον δέ τι τοῦτο καὶ ἁδύ
γίνετ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώποις, εὑρεῖν δ᾽ οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι.
[…]
οὕτω τοι Πολύφαμος ἐποίμαινενFootnote 9 τὸν ἔρωτα
μουσίσδων, ῥᾷον δὲ διᾶγ᾽ ἢ εἰ χρυσὸν ἔδωκεν.

The opposite, ‘Euripidean’, direction was nevertheless noticed and remarked upon already by the Idyll’s addressee Nicias, a physician from Miletus, the first two lines of whose response are transmitted by the scholia on Theocritus: ἦν ἄρ᾽ ἀληθὲς τοῦτο, Θεόκριτε· οἱ γὰρ Ἔρωτες | ποιητὰς πολλοὺς ἐδίδαξαν τοὺς πρὶν ἀμούσους (SH 566). Euripides’ fragment may also have occurred to Callimachus in Epigr. 46 Pf., generally believed to be ‘an imitation of or reaction to Theocritus’ poem’,Footnote 10 whether independently or inspired by Nicias: ὡς ἀγαθὰν Πολύφαμος ἀνεύρατο τὰν ἐπαοιδάν | τὠραμένῳ· ναὶ Γᾶν, οὐκ ἀμαθὴς ὁ Κύκλωψ (Anth. Pal. 12.150.1–2  =  Gow-Page, HE 1047–8), and possibly once again in his Acontius and Cydippe: αὐτὸς Ἔρως ἐδίδαξεν Ἀκόντιον, ὁππότε καλῇ | ᾔθετο Κυδίππῃ παῖς ἐπὶ παρθενικῇ, | τέχνην—οὐ γὰρ ὅγ᾿ ἔσκε πολύκροτος […] (Aet. 67.1–3 Pf.); both ἀμαθής (Epigr. 46.2) and οὐ πολύκροτος (Aet. 67.3) seem to echo Euripides’ ἄμουσος.Footnote 11 Given the quick and widespread acquaintance of later Greek authors with Euripides’ idea of Eros as instigator of love song, and taking into account its colourful Hellenistic afterlife, there is little doubt that Catullus must have been familiar with it, too. His fructus amoris may well be another variation on the theme.

It is pertinent to note that also munera Veneris in Catull. 68.10 have been understood as ‘love poems’; see especially Skinner's discussion of the line.Footnote 12 Just as for the above understanding of fructus amoris, there seem to be no direct parallels, but Skinner is certainly right in stating that ‘the lack of other examples of this particular usage proves little, since Catullus was capable of employing old words in a new sense when occasion required’.Footnote 13 Additionally, our knowledge about this particular occasion happens to be, as Kiss emphasizes,Footnote 14 quite incomplete, since we do not know the precise requests Catullus is replying to in carm. 68; nor do we have any background information about the events preceding composition of carm. 55 or about Catullus’ relationship with Camerius. If the two instances were allowed to be seen as supporting each other, my interpretation of fructus amoris would not even postulate a genuinely isolated usage.

The paradosis of the last lines, often doubted, would perhaps also gain a sharper point: ‘then again, if you wish, you may as well keep silent; just make sure you read my poems’ (21–2).Footnote 15 Mynors, Fordyce and ThomsonFootnote 16 (among others) print uestri sim in 22; sim comes from a group of later manuscripts, therefore being no more than an early conjecture to restore sense, while the variants nostri (varia lectio noted by R2) and uestri (OGR1) may have coexisted in the archetype.Footnote 17 Even if they did not, variation between noster and uester, requiring in compendious script no more than a change between n and u, is common enough in Catullus.Footnote 18 Kroll, when hesitatinglyFootnote 19 printing nostri sis, seemed troubled about the sudden change in thought: ‘nostri sis, worauf die Überlieferung zu führen scheint, bringt den ganz fremden Gedanken herein, daß Camerius an C.s Liebe teilnehmen soll.’ Already the preceding line, however, amounts to a full reversal of the poet's earlier begging, thus preparing for an inversion of the direction of participation in the last line. When, in a surprise twist at the end of the poem, Catullus gives himself away, we come to understand that he pleaded for his friend's return and confession not so much for Camerius’ sake as for his own: ‘Well, maybe you really do not need my attention after all—but I need yours!’Footnote 20

Footnotes

1 Text (disregarding orthographical matters) as in Kroll, W., C. Valerius Catullus, herausgegeben und erklärt (Stuttgart, 1989 7 = 19806 ). The most recent critical edition is Thomson's (below n. 16).

2 Nothing in ThLL s.v. fructus, VI.1.1393.25–44, points to any substantially different meaning.

3 Materialien zu einem Kommentar über die Orestis tragoedia des Dracontius (Hildesheim, 1888), 19 , on Orest. 143.

4 I find it difficult to read lines 18–19 as a general statement, detached from the particular situation (as e.g. Khan, H. Akbar did implicitly in ‘An interpretational crux: Catullus LV and LVIIIa’, AC 36 [1967], 116–31, at 128); tenent in 17 is specific to the situation, then 18 tenes should be as well. The only general statement around is line 20, but it is about the goddess of love, not about one of the protagonists.

5 E.g. Kroll (n. 1), ad loc., rightly doubtful: ‘Das ist vielleicht nicht sehr logisch gedacht, aber C. kommt es darauf an, den Freund um jeden Preis zum Reden zu bringen.’

6 During the last stages of preparing this manuscript for print there appeared a note proposing an attractive reinterpretation of the whole poem, which led quite naturally to this very understanding of fructus amoris: in ‘Speaking stone in Catullus 55’, CPh 112 (2017), 89–97 , M. Pasco-Pranger holds that the femellae of 55.7 are statues of the Muses in Pompey's portico and that Camerius is a love poet whom Catullus would like to see publishing his work. As for our expression, Pasco-Pranger (this note), 95 quotes Cic. Arch. 12, where fructus is connected with publishing activity: ceteros pudeat si qui se ita litteris abdiderunt ut nihil possint ex eis neque ad communem adferre fructum neque in aspectum lucemque proferre.

7 I am very grateful to CQ’s anonymous reader for pointing out this possibility to me, including the parallels in Aristophanes, Plato and Callim. Aet. 67 Pf.

8 Borrowings can be traced in Menander, Pseudo-Longinus and Plutarch (three times) among others; see Kannicht, R. (ed.), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 5, Euripides (Göttingen, 2004), on fr. 663, and Starkie, W.J.M., The Wasps of Aristophanes, with Introduction, Metrical Analysis, Critical Notes, and Commentary (Amsterdam, 1968), on Vesp. 1074.

9 For the meaning of ἐποίμαινεν, see Hunter's, R. discussion in Theocritus. A Selection (Cambridge, 1999), 220 and ad loc.

10 Faraone, C.A., ‘Magic, medicine and Eros in the prologue to Theocritus’ Id. 11’, in: Fantuzzi, M. and Papanghelis, T. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (Leiden – Boston, 2006), 75–90, at 81.

11 Aet. 67.1–3 does not refer to the creation of poetry, but shares with Idyll 11 the concept of a twofold interaction; see Harder's, A. comment on the motif of ὁ τρώσας ἰάσεται (Callimachus, Aetia. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary [Oxford, 2012], ad loc.), which underlies Callimachus’ account also in Aet. 70 Pf.: ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τόξου | αὐτὸς ὁ τοξευτὴς ἄρδιν ἔχων ἑτέρου.

12 Skinner, M.B., ‘The unity of Catullus 68: the structure of 68a’, TAPhA 103 (1972), 495–512, at 500 n. 13. See further Kiss, D., ‘Catullo 68, 10: munera Veneris ’, Philologus 152 (2008), 345–7, and Olszaniec, W., ‘ Munera Veneris sive de Catulli carminis 68 textu defendendo’, Philologus 152 (2008), 348–9.

13 A striking case in point would be 65.3, where Catullus calls his poems fetus Musarum; he was the first to apply fetus to a ‘product of the mind’ (OLD s.v. fetus 2 4c); see Kroll (n. 1), ad loc.

14 Kiss (n. 12), 347.

15 Before taking into account the equation fructus amoris = ‘love poems’, nostri sis amoris particeps (22) would naturally be understood as ‘be a confidant of my affairs’; particeps in this sense is found already in comedy (Plaut. Aul. 605 is speculatum huc misit me, ut quae fierent fieret particeps; Ter. Haut. 427–8 nuntium adporto tibi | quoius maxume te fieri participem cupis) and remains common especially when coupled with consilii/-orum (e.g. Cic. Fam. 11.2.2 digni sumus quos habeas tui consili participes; see ThLL s.v. particeps, X.1.494.49–53).

16 Mynors, R.A.B., C. Valerii Catulli Carmina (Oxford, 1958); Fordyce, C.J., Catullus. A Commentary (Oxford, 1961); Thomson, D.F.S., Catullus. Edited with a Textual and Interpretative Commentary (Toronto, 1997; reprinted with corrections 1998). Manuscript report above is based on Thomson's apparatus.

17 Barwick, Thus K., ‘Zu Catull c. 55 und 58a ’, Hermes 63 (1928), 66–80, at 71. Thomson (n. 16), 42 classifies nostri as a correction introduced by Coluccio Salutati, scribe of R2, rather than as a variant found in Salutati's exemplar X (where it would probably go back to the archetype: Thomson [n. 16], 28). But this is evidently due to Thomson's principle ‘to refrain from taking any given variant further back in the tradition than the evidence positively demands’ ([n. 16], 34); earlier origin is by no means excluded.

18 Details in Kokoszkiewicz, K.M., ‘Catullus 14B, 16, 41, 43, 55, 55B: adnotationes criticae’, Mnemosyne 60 (2007), 608–27, at 624.

19 See his Nachträge: Kroll (n. 1), 297.

20 Ellis, R. (A Commentary on Catullus [Oxford, 1889], ad loc.) and Barwick (n. 17) defended nostri sis with interpretations not far from mine.